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Man Seeking Pedophile Friends Arrested

Toshio Watanabe is a pedophile. His fascination with naked and dead children began when he was 15, and only worsened as he grew older. To satiate his hunger, he became an elementary school teacher. In 1999, Watanabe created a Web site on which he posted photographs of children who died in car accidents. He got some crap from some of the parents of the dead children, who were rightfully freaked out. And then, a few years later, he sent pictures of naked kids to two other pedophilic men. The e-mail was traced by the local police, and Watanabe was arrested for violating child prostitution and pornography laws in February. They found around 800,000 pictures of naked kids on his computer.

When asked why he e-mailed naked pics to his friends, Watanabe said: "I wanted to know I wasn’t alone."

Does anyone know of a self-help group for this guy? Maybe there’s one in prison for pedophiles? They say being a pedophile in a US prison is like the worst thing ever. You’re at the bottom of the bottom and you’ll probably get butt raped a billion times before they grant you a bed move. I wonder if the same applies in Japan.

I am also the founder of The Tofu Project, a boutique program that helps Japanese entrepreneurs and creators think deeper, tell better stories, and go out into the world in a much bigger way. We work with companies like Mixi, Japan Airlines, and Salesforce.com.

Sometimes I try to explain Japanese culture on CNN, BBC, CBC, WSJ, ABC (so many acronyms!) or in person at places like the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, ETech, and Ignite!